I watched her from my end of the bar as she served the other patrons. There was really nothing special about this bar to keep coming back to it. Nothing special that is, except for her.
The food was terrible and the place was in a general lack of good upkeep, typical overall of your average street bar in Philadelphia.
The patrons were a boisterous lot and loud, too loud, but I could tune them out if I had her to look at. I didn't really understand my fascination with her. Sure she was pretty, but there were a lot of pretty girls in the world, why her? I didn't understand it, but I kept coming back to this seedy place to watch her for an hour or two. Okay, maybe it had already been over three hours tonight.
I'd been coming here for almost two years now and I'd learned a lot about her without really looking into her back story. It was the subtle things I learned about her.
The difference between a genuine smile and the mask that would fall into place when she was dealing with someone she didn't like or found distasteful, which happened a lot in a bar like this. In general she got along with mostly everyone and she had a way of putting a stop to trouble before it got out of hand.
She had fire in her and I'd never seen her back down once from a situation. I doubted that there was a man in the place that wouldn't have defended her if she had need of it.
She flirted a lot and had a frank quality to her that said she liked men, but she wasn't a tramp. I'd never seen her go home with anyone; whether or not she had a boyfriend out of work I didn't know and didn't care. While I sat in my corner seat at the bar she was mine to look at and appreciate.
I never hoped for anything more than that. Chances were that I'd be dead tomorrow, but that was everyday in my life. For now I was enjoying one of the few pleasures in my barren life, which was watching her. She was so alive and vivacious that just being near her made me feel more alive somehow inside too.
She was talking with a woman down the bar from me, as she was polishing a shot glass and appeared to be talking about some topic she really liked. The reason I knew that was because her nose would crinkle up slightly when she was truly interested in a conversation. The conversation ended and the other woman left and Anna, that was her name, turned to place the shot glasses she had polished up onto a shelf above the bar.